In this issue’s Forum section, in Gender Bias in Sport Media, Mueller and Grace assess national Football League media content, from a gendered perspective, through an examination of Twitter posts from the NFL’s Carolina Panthers. The initial data suggests a stereotypical approach and a possible failure of sports bodies to engage with their diverse audience.
In our regular articles, in Being women in a male preserve, Pitti looks at the gendered characteristics of contemporary sports audiences, focusing on the phenomenon of female ultras or ‘professional’ football fans. Drawing on research conducted on Italian football, this paper offers an analysis of female participation in communities of organised supporters. The paper pays particular attention to their perception of the existing gender differences and how female ultras explain inequalities on the basis of ‘natural’ differences between men and women. Existing patterns of male dominance are supported by female fans’ own discourses and performance of their gender identity in the ‘male preserve’. Rather than questioning male dominance and gender hierarchies, female supporters’ efforts appear aimed at being recognized as ultras ‘despite being women’.
In Gender Trouble on the German Soccer Field, Kaelberer studies soccer as a social sphere for the expression of masculinity and ideological battles over gender roles in Germany. This paper discusses whether the growth of women’s soccer can challenge hegemonic masculinity in an area that represents an important economic aspect of consumer culture and social identity. There are reasons to remain skeptical about the subversive potential of women’s soccer and the author argues that the unholy trinity of the sports-media-business alliance is the root cause of the limitations women’s soccer faces in challenging hegemonic masculinity.
In When two become one, Karioris and Allan seek to examine the limits of men and masculinity studies and the questions currently disregarded in this research field. In particular they are struck by the volume of ‘sex negative’ research and this paper seeks to think about ‘sex positive’ visions of men’s studies.
In Masculinities and emotional expression in UK servicemen, McAllister, Callaghan and Fellin look at the discourses of military servicemen which position them as more prone to psychological damage but reluctant to seek assistance, because of the culture of ‘toughness’, which excludes ‘feminine’ characteristics like emotionality. This is seen as a barrier to military personnel seeking help and this article presents interviews with military and ex-military personnel. The authors argue that the construct of military masculinity is more complex than a simple exclusion of the ‘feminine’ and the ‘emotional’ and explore how the masculine notions of military solidarity and ‘brotherhood’ create a ‘safe’ masculine space within which men could share their emotional experiences while recognising its constraints.
In Migrant women breadwinners in Italy during the crisis, De Rosa studies gender gaps and the labour market in Europe after the economic crisis during which the number of families with a single wage-earner, in particular female-headed households, rose. The differential impact of the crisis on the male and female labour force was an effect of the ‘gendered’ and ‘racialized’ structure of the labour market. Occupational concentration in care and reproductive work, and the public sector, protected women from unemployment. Adopting an intersectional approach this paper assesses how the structure of the Italian labour market has changed, and to what extent the increase in female breadwinner families, especially among migrants, hides intersectional inequalities by gender and citizenship.
In Doing gender and gender equality, Hellum and Oláh contribute to the knowledge on how concepts of gender and gender equality are constructed within research interviews, deepening understanding of the underlying gender system. The authors focus on emotions and emotional processes expressed during interviews when specific questions originating in the World Value Survey were asked. The article seeks to shed more light on how incorporating emotional expressions, and the evaluation of these emotions, can influence or demonstrate the construction of gender. The authors explore how the specific situation of the interview influences ‘doing gender and gender equality’ through emotion.
In Empowering women through the positive birth movement, Hallam, Howard, Locke and Thomas adopt a community psychology approach to explore the role that the Positive Birth Movement (PBM) may have in tackling negative birth experiences. A Foucauldian inspired analysis, in relation to semi-structured interviews conducted by the authors, explores themes relating to the lack of support and information provided by the NHS in the UK and the function of the PBM as a transformative community space. Within these themes, a focus on neoliberalism, choice and the woman’s position as an active consumer of health care is critically discussed. It is argued that the PBM has the potential to prepare women for positive birth experiences but more attention needs to be paid to the wider contexts that limit women’s ability to make ‘free’ choice.
In Making space for a new role, Kaźmierczak and Karasiewicz examine the reorganization of identity in the transition to parenthood. In Western societies women and men are encouraged to share responsibilities, but women’s self-concept is strongly associated with motherhood, whereas men still value the role of breadwinner. Here, the main life roles (spouse, worker, parent), before and after the birth of a child, were studied. The perceived (relative and directly assessed), and relative desired salience of a parental role increased after the child’s birth in both genders. Women valued the parent role more highly than men who deemed the worker role more salient to their identity.
In High heels as a disciplinary practice of femininity in Sandra Cisneros’s ‘The House on Mango Street’, Burcar considers feminist theory and literary criticism as failing to systematically address the role high heels play in upholding and naturalizing the construct of femininity. This article examines the diverse but complementary ways in which high heels function as one of the contemporary devices of femininity in capitalist patriarchy. The author argues that the promotion of high heels has a stake in reconfiguring women, and their bodies, as symbolically, and literally, tiny and unstable, as fragile and helpless, and as sexually objectified and commodified. The article relies on an interdisciplinary approach, which brings together feminist theory and recent medical findings on the effects that wearing high heels has on women’s health and motility. These are applied to the way the problematics of high heels tends to be captured and exposed in socially engaged literary works such as Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, which serves as a rare instance of acritically engaged literary piece on this matter.
Blu, February 2019